LE BUGUE, France, July 31 If you have been on a long-term diet, it's more than likely you'll be battling a craving for certain types of foods you know you shouldn't have.
Until now, scientists believed those foods would be carbohydrate-focused. Carbohydrates are the sugars and starches found in breads, cereals, fruits and vegetables.
This conviction might surprise most dieters. I'm not familiar with people struggling with a diet who sit there longing for a rutabaga. Personally, what I generally hunger for is malted milk shakes, double chocolate-chip cookies, french fries, salted cashews and so forth.
Now it's official. Dieters crave calories.
"What is commonly called carbohydrate addiction should probably be relabeled as calorie addiction," Susan Roberts of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, an author of the study, told FoodNavigator.com.
"The craved foods do have carbohydrate, but they also have fat, and some protein, too. The most identifiable thing about the foods people crave is that they are highly dense in calories."
This discovery, just published in the International Journal of Obesity, could be used to help dieters. Food manufacturers could produce foods that replicate the taste of desired high-calorie foods but contain fewer calories.
Because what the study also confirmed is that food cravings are a normal part of dieting and it's OK -- even actively advisable -- to give in to them on occasion.
Ninety-four percent of the participants not only confessed to food cravings, but the research formally established what anyone who has ever been on a diet knows: that being on a diet actively appears to raise food cravings.
"If individuals understand that they can expect cravings and that those cravings will be for calorie-dense foods, it might help in their weight management," Roberts said. "One thing to do is to substitute foods that taste similar but have fewer calories, since the craving can be satisfied by related tastes."
So as long as you are losing an effective amount of weight, when you let yourself surrender to a food craving once in a while, you are far more likely to keep your weight under control. If you are not happy with your weight loss, you are far less likely to be able to rein in your food cravings.
"Allowing yourself to have the foods you crave, but doing so less frequently, may be one of the most important keys to successful weight control," said Roberts.
According to figures from the World Health Organization and the International Obesity Task force, about one-fourth of the adult population of the United States is obese; worldwide, the total is 300 million.
If you are on a diet and yearning for a piece of chocolate, this study says: Go for it.
I'd add to that and suggest you buy the very best dark chocolate you can possibly find, with the highest cocoa solid content. You'll get more chocolate satisfaction from dark chocolate than milk. It's less likely to be packed with sugar to compensate for low cocoa fat. The better the chocolate, the less you need to provide that chocolate bliss-out.
LE BUGUE, France, July 31 --
